


Sparks and Souls

by devilangelsol



Series: TFP One-Shots [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Allspark, Cute, Except for Arcee, Families of Choice, Fluff, Gen, Interspecies Adoption, Optimus as Team Dad, Post-Deadlock, Pre-Predacons Rising (Prime Movie), They're all dads, Unconventional Families, imma make that a tag, she's a mom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 21:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21326869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilangelsol/pseuds/devilangelsol
Summary: "I'm sorry, what?""Isaid, I'm running carrier protocols."He blinked."I'm sorry, what?"Or, the one where (most of) Team Prime accidentally and unknowingly adopts the kids. Fluff ensues.
Relationships: Arcee & Jack Darby, Bulkhead & Miko Nakadai, Bumblebee & Rafael "Raf" Esquivel, Miko Nakadai & Optimus Prime, Miko Nakadai & Wheeljack, Optimus Prime & Jack Darby, Optimus Prime & Rafael "Raf" Esquivel, Rafael "Raf" Esquivel & Ratchet
Series: TFP One-Shots [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690219
Comments: 21
Kudos: 293





	Sparks and Souls

The aftermath of the battle on the Nemesis and Cybertron's subsequent rekindling was enveloped in a haze of confusion: it had all happened so _fast_. The Decepticon troops on the ship when the Autobots had commandeered it had been in uproar in the lower levels, clamoring for information. Those stationed on Earth were in even greater disarray, with their communications officer missing and no clear orders or objective: when the news of their leader's death reached them, and with their seconds in command unavailable, they were like ants around a ravaged anthill. Some continued to fight, some fled. Most stayed where they were, lost, huddled in little groups and warily eyeing any passersby.  
  
Knockout, the sole ranking Decepticon left, was placed in the ship's brig and kept under surveillance. Beyond uttering a few half-hearted complaints about the state of his paint, he remained docile--which would have been suspicious if not for the circumstances: like the vehicons, he was probably still on stress containment protocols.  
  
The next couple of Earth months were spent rebuilding, dealing with minor revolts, establishing a base and rounding up wayward Decepticons: Ratchet bridged Team Prime through almost every day, yet they never returned to hangar E for any length of time (they carefully skirted around Nevada as well, for reasons they would have found hard to explain.)  
Those months were a flurry of activity, where none of them had a moment's respite.

  
In the _following_ months, however, life settled down: they now had a heavily fortified and stocked base, plans for more buildings and roads, a reliable source of energon, an agreement with the human government... and yet, Arcee found herself to be... twitchy.  
It was normal, she told herself: after all, she was surrounded by mechs that had been her sworn enemies for millions of years, Starscream and Shockwave were free, their activities unknown, and Predaking was prowling about in the wastes.  
  
Still, that didn't excuse her for nearly vapourizing Bulkhead's helm crest when he accidentally dropped the load of spare struts he was carrying, the noise echoing down the metal hallway resembling the sound of heavy ordnance. They had both stared at each other afterwards, frozen in fighting stance, before she had stiffly apologized and helped him pick them up.  
  
Then she actually _fired_ at Smokescreen when he popped out of the wall in front of her; the blast had phased right through him, and he had forgiven her at once, but the knowledge that she could have seriously injured her teammate rankled.  
And then, in the last couple of days, she found she had to consciously stop herself from flinching away from Optimus. _Optimus._ Something was definitely off with her processor.

  
And so that's how she found herself lying in Ratchet's medbay on Earth, with a bunch of cables plugged into her neck.  
"Initial scans don't bring up any anomalies," the medic announced, tilting the screen so that she could see the readings. "I'll need to perform a more in depth examination and then compare it to your previous patterns, which will take some time. What are your exact symptoms?"  
  
She grimaced, tapping one of the pink prongs on her face.  
"It's hard to explain. There's something off... it's almost as I'm running combat coding, nonstop. I feel..." she struggled find the right word "...paranoid. Like everything should be considered a threat."  
  
"Hmmm." Ratchet looked dubious. "You know, it might just be your systems getting used to a new regime after millenia of war. It's not unthinkable that you may have some trouble adjusting," he added, not unkindly. "But if I find anything, I'll let you know."  
  
She nodded and left, and Ratchet set the program to compile, his processor soon taken over by more pressing concerns.

The very next day, Wheeljack showed up at his station. His EM field spiked in an uncharacteristic mix of coercion and abashment before evening out into a flat line. Which was even more uncharacteristic. Ratchet turned to face him with a raised eyebrow.  
With an air of being under duress, the Wrecker carefully shut the door behind him (Ratchet's other eyebrow crept up to meet the first), walked towards him and stopped, shifting awkwardly. He mumbled something.  
  
"I'm sorry, what?"  
"I _said_, I'm running carrier protocols."  
He blinked.  
"I'm sorry, what?"  
  
The look Wheeljack leveled at him could have made a lesser mech cry.  
  
Ratchet stared at him for a moment before pinching the bridge of his chevron.  
"Where on Earth--or Cyberton, for that matter--did you find a spark to manage _that?_ The Well's been dry since the fall of Iacon!"  
  
The look turned disbelieving.  
"I _didn't_." The 'you underclocked afthead' was implied. "It's some sort of glitch. Or a virus." He began pacing like an agitated cybercat. "Whatever it is, it brought the slaggin' code online, and I haven't been able to power down for the past _deca-cycle_ because every time I try, it churns out a hundred hypothetical scenarios of me and my nonexistent cargo getting brutally offlined in some way or another." There he stopped and turned to glare at him. "So can, or can you not shut it off? Because if you can't, and _soon_, I'm gonna blow a circuit. Or something else. Either way, it ain't gonna be pretty."  
  
Ratchet quashed the feeling of disappointment with the ease of practice. "How did you figure you were running _carrier protocols_?"  
  
His finials drooped, the uncomfortable look returning. "Well. You know. I'm not that young, I remember how it used to be... before." He glanced at him, as if to gauge his reaction. "Anyway, I knew my processes had changed, and there were just too many parallels, so I ran them through the Jackhammer's computer and cross referenced with all the examples I had in its databanks. I can bring them up here if you want." He waved offhandedly. "But yeah, that's definitely what it is. I triple checked."  
  
A file pinged against Ratchet's processor as it was brought up from storage.  
"Scrap."  
"What?"  
"You might be right about it being a virus. Arcee came in yesterday with similar symptoms." He brought the relevant data up on the screen, and applied filters. "The scans didn't show anything, but I didn't think to look for _active carrier protocols_. Primus." The scrambled mess of data on the screen had been defragmented and filtered and interpolated until all that was left was one elegant, white sine curve. "Bring up yours here, next to it." He did. Silence filled the medbay for a second.  
  
"Scrap," he muttered again. "I need to contact the others. I don't know what this is, but it's not doing any good. Viruses are _never_ good."  
Wheeljack whined.  
"Can't you try to shut this off first, Doc? I'm _dying_ here!"  
  
Ratchet didn't even deign to glare at him. When he came back and found the Wrecker out cold on one of the medical slabs, he shook his head and ex-vented. Stubborn slagger. Of course the code would have been screaming at him, out in deep space, alone and with a ship full of grenades. He was actually mildly impressed at how long he had managed to hold out.

"How many of us do you say are infected, Ratchet?" Optimus enquired.  
  
"As far as I've been able to tell? Arcee. Wheeljack. Bulkhead. Me." And hadn't _that_ been a surprise. He looked up at his leader. "I can't say for sure, since the Matrix and the Key interfere with the signal too much to get a clear reading, but you might be too." Not that Optimus showed any signs of it: the Prime looked as unruffled as usual. "I've been testing the eradicons and the vehicons too, but so far they've come up clean. So it's just the five of us."  
  
"So it's definitely a virus of Decepticon make, then?" Arcee asked sharply.  
  
The medic shrugged. "If it is, it's a highly ineffective one. It doesn't seem to do anything other than... _this_. But I can't shut down the effects without finding the virus first, and it's proving to be very hard to pin." He shook his head. "Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd say that the code just started up on its own."  
  


"What are carrier protocols, anyway?"  
Ratchet paused in his typing to glance down at the human sitting on the console. All five of them had come around at least once or twice, but only Fowler and Rafael showed up regularly. Rafael in particular had proved unexpectedly good company in the period following the final battle, when the rest of the team was too busy on Cybertron to stop by: his quick mind and inquisitive nature resonated with his spark, and it had become their custom to work side by side on their projects in companionable silence. This day, they were trying to trap the foreign string of code that was infecting their systems, without much success.

"Hmph. Well. You have undoubtedly made a comparison between us and the non-sentient robots of your planet, at least in the privacy of your mind: we aren't _organic_, after all. My frame--" he rapped his knuckles against his chassis "--was constructed by other mechs, as is the case for all of us. Unless one is gifted a frame by a legendary artifact, of course," he snorted. "Some of them are even mass produced. Oh, don't look so shocked," he said upon seeing Raf's expression. "Why do you think the Decepticon soldiers look so similar? But that isn't the important part. No..."  
  
Despite his best efforts, his thoughts turned gloomy. "The reason we are sentient is because we have a spark. And _that_ is something no mech has ever been able to create, no matter how much effort was put into its research. Our sparks all came out from the Well of Allsparks, on Cybertron. And ever since our planet went dark..." he sagged. "Anyway, even before then the Well was... erratic. There would be orns where not a single spark would emerge from it, and then one cycle a thousand would rise all at once. A spark will extinguish without a frame to sustain it, and new frames aren't always available. That's where carrier code comes in."  
  
"So, basically, if a Cybertronian found a spark and there wasn't an empty body around to put it in, they would just... what, carry it around with them until they got one? Is that where you're going with this?"  
  
Ratchet nodded, pleased.  
"The code doesn't let you forget that you're not only responsible for your own wellbeing, but for somebody else's too. That's the reason for the... skittishness, if you can call it that. But all that doesn't explain why it's activating _now_, or why only some of us have been affected! None of it makes _sense_!"  
  
"Is there anything else that could trigger it? Maybe something happened when you fired the Omega Beam?"  
  
"I don't know," the medic admitted, and went back to his typing. "It's worth thinking about."  
  
The space bridge activated and Bumblebee appeared in the hangar. Raf's face lit up.  
"Bee!"  
"Raf?"  
  
Ratchet turned away, fighting a smile. Primus, but it was good to hear the scout _speak_ again. He glanced back at the duo: Bumblebee looked a little stiff, but slowly warmed up in the face of his friend's enthusiasm. Ratchet rolled his eyes at the display: while it was true that they had no official reason to remain on Earth any longer, that didn't mean they couldn't visit any time they wanted. Especially when it was clear that they did very _much_ want to.  
  
"I was going to inspect this abandoned mine we picked up on the scanner... want to come along? It's not far from where we can bridge in--"  
  
Raf was already throwing his stuff into his backpack eagerly. "Sure! Uh--" He turned to look at the medic with wide eyes. He snorted, shooing them. "I think I can handle being by myself for a while, Rafael. Go on, you two. Git." He shook his head as they took off with a whoop. Younglings, the lot of them.

  
And he froze.  
  
Surely, that wasn't...  
  
But there had to be a reason as to why Bumblebee's scans came up clean. Smokescreen and Ultra Magnus could be explained by them having joined the team later on, the virus or... _whatever_ not having the time or the means to upload into their processors... but _Bumblebee_?  
  
An odd weight settled on his shoulders as he turned to look at where the pair had disappeared. Hm. An interesting hypothesis, but it would need to be tested.

"Jack. Would you mind contacting Miko and coming over? I need your help with a project."

The teen held the line for a couple more seconds, bemused. That had been... almost polite. It was unnerving. Should he be worried?  
  
He saw no reason to refuse, though, and when he and the girl walked through the portal that had appeared in his garage and found two familiar figures on the other side, there was no stopping the grin from forming on his face. He had known, intellectually, that he would see them-- her --again, but with the months passing with no word from the other side, and their last farewell having been so grave and wistful, he had started to doubt.  
  
Miko certainly didn't seem to have any qualms expressing her feelings for the situation. She let out an ear-splitting shriek and rushed across the hangar floor to hug Bulkhead's leg. The Wrecker hurried to get her away from the squish zone; she began hugging his finger instead.  
Jack made his way more calmly towards the smaller, sharper form, smiling so much that it was starting to hurt, and looked up to see his expression mirrored in Arcee's pink-framed face.  
  
"Welcome back."

"I've studied all your readings for the past seven solar cycles, and I've come to believe that this isn't, in fact, a virus."  
  
"But what else could it be?" Bulkhead spoke up.  
"I was getting to that. Look here," Ratchet pointed at the screen. "That was your signal three days ago, when you came through the space bridge to hand me that welder. This," he said, bringing up a new graph, "is your signal right now. See how it's less unstable at the edges?"  
  
"So?" Arcee enquired. "It's still active, isn't it?"  
"Yes, but this way it can be contained. It might still ping once in a while in the background, but it shouldn't present any ulterior problems once you've downloaded the patch, especially since now I know what's causing it."  
  
"And what_ is_ causing it?"  
The medic smirked.  
  
"The carrier protocols are working perfectly well. They are programmed to activate when we take on a spark, knowing all the consequences that such a decision entails."  
"But we _haven't_!"  
His smirk faded into something softer, and he purposefully looked over at where Raf was hanging over the railing of the catwalk, eyes twinkling behind his glasses as he met his gaze.

  
"Haven't we, though?"

After the ensuing commotion had died down, Optimus stepped up from where he'd been quietly observing the scene, and knelt down in front of the three humans, tilting his head to the side as he studied them. The hangar grew still.  
  
"I know I have said this before," he began, "but I feel the need to clarify, in light of Ratchet's recent discovery. Whether or not this is true from an objective standpoint, I consider you all family. This doesn't have to mean anything to you, of course--" he was cut off by Miko walking over and bumping her head against his knee.  
  
"Thank you, Boss Bot." She might have been sniffling. She hugged Jack and Raf too for good measure, when they approached the Prime and joined her. It was that kind of day.

In the end, nothing really changed. The following day found Raf in Ratchet's medbay once again, working on a piece of coding for the new ground bridge they had been building (since using a space bridge to travel from Nevada to Utah and back was both overkill and horribly inefficient).  
  
"I still don't understand why Bumblebee doesn't have active coding," he said, while adding comments to a section.  
  
"He's a bit young to fully grasp the significance," the medic answered. "If he were to house another spark it would be a different matter, but in this case the entry conditions were more psychological than anything regarding energy readings. Although, carrying you around in alt mode certainly did nothing to discourage the code for the rest of us." The boy hummed in understanding.  
  
"You know," he said offhandedly a while later, as he opened a new script, "there's this whole philosophical dispute over if humans actually have souls or not. But if your carrier code identified us as sparks, then I guess that answers that question, huh?"  
Ratchet frowned up at the ceiling, then snorted derisively.

"Hmph. As if that could even be up for debate."

**Author's Note:**

> For all of you that were wondering, the Bots whose coding activated are the ones who act like parents in the series. So, most of them XD.  
Also, this story has a very similar vibe to my previous fic Giant Metal Kangaroos https://archiveofourown.org/works/20636801, but hey, any good idea is worth writing about twice.


End file.
